The Birth of the Human Rights Idea and Its Detractors

Abstract

It would defeat the purpose of both this chapter and the entire book to à priori define human rights here. But there is something about the subject that pulls most of us to it, even if we can't or don't want to analyze it. Of all political concepts, it seems to be the one that most touches our concern for human suffering and the domination of some people by others with superior power. As Micheline Ishay shows us in her historical narrative of human rights texts, such concern goes back at least as far as the Old Testament (especially Exodus 22: 20--27: ``Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt'' and Leviticus 19:13--19: ``neither shalt thou stand aside when mischief befalls they neighbor'') and Mahayana Buddhism's description of the compassionate Bodhisattva (``I take upon myself the burden of all suffering …all beings I must set free'').1